George Soros Funding Pot Legalization Push

George Soros has poured more than $80 million into the drive toward marijuana legalization since 1994. His partner in this effort was the late Peter B. Lewis, the former head of Progressive Insurance, a pot smoker himself, who added $40 million to the cause.

Soros funds the Drug Policy Alliance with $4 million yearly from his Foundation to Promote an Open Society. Its chairman, Ira Glasser, is the former executive director of the ACLU. Soros also funds the Marijuana Policy Project, as well as the ACLU, which supports pot legalization.

John Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under George W. Bush, said, “the pro-legalization movement hasn’t come from a groundswell of the people. A great deal of its funding and fraud has been perpetrated by George Soros and then promoted by celebrities. The truth is under attack, and it’s an absolutely dangerous direction for this country to be going in.”

Soros told the Wall Street Journal in 2010, “Legalizing marijuana may make it easier for adults to buy marijuana, but it can hardly make it any more accessible to young people. I’d much rather invest in effective education than ineffective arrest and incarceration.”

Soros and Lewis were instrumental in helping fund the efforts that legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington state in 2012. They used their nonprofits to give 68% of the funding for the New Approach to Washington, the group that pursued voters to sign the marijuana legalization initiative. In Colorado, The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, established by the Marijuana Policy Project, received 67% of its funding from nonprofits associated with Soros and Lewis.

The director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, Bill Piper, said:

From a constitutional and legal perspective, states can legalize marijuana if they want, and there’s nothing the federal government can do. State after state decided to end the prohibition of alcohol and forced the federal government to change federal law. What we’re going to see over next decade is states repel marijuana prohibition and then the federal government following suit. It’s not a question of whether it’s going to happen; it’s a question of when.

The other side has so much money, it’s incredible, and the bulk of it is coming from a handful of people who want to change public policy. When we look at what we’ve been able to raise in other states, they raise millions. We’re lucky if we can raise $100,000. It’s been a process of basically brainwashing the public. They run ads, put up billboards, get high-profile celebrity support and glowing media coverage. If you can repeat a lie often enough, the people believe.

Current projects for the Soros-led charge for pot legalization are:

Oregon: new Approach Oregon got $96,000 from Lewis and $50,000 from Soros

Florida: “United for Care, People United for Medical Marijuana” got 80% of its funding from Soros and John Morgan

Arizona and California will see legalization measures in 2016 supported by the Marijuana policy project and the Drug Policy Alliance

Tom Angell, founder and chairman of the Marijuana Majority which is partly funded by the Drug Policy Alliance, crowed, “It’s only a matter of time before marijuana is legalized under federal law. We now have 20 states plus the District of Columbia considering legalization efforts, two states have already legalized it for all adults over the age of 21 — politicians will have to follow the will of the people on this.”